Musings of a person who spends far too much time on computer games, outside of summer when I’m getting hit by cricket balls. There's a few more Sleepypete's out there, it's only me if you see the Dwagon.

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Thursday, November 08, 2012

Wheely Obsession

I feel I have one of those "must buy widget" obsessions coming on again.

What is it this time ?

A steering wheel. Yes ! A steering wheel. This particular obsession started after watching a Youtube video by the Yogscast, where they were trying out Forza Horizon (racing game). There's a bit of history to it as well :

In the BBC micro era, I was addicted to a game called Revs. It was a Formula 3 car simulator which was groundbreaking. It dates back to when computers were archaic compared to what they can do now. If I emulated a BBC on a modern PC, it would barely register on the cpu need. I believe Revs became the foundation for the first F1 games on PC.

One of the things distracting me at uni as Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 3, which could get some quite hilarious crashes going. It offered a decent challenge. I didn't think so much of the Porsche game though or the first Colin McRae rally game.

Games a far more complex these days though, with the simulation going as far as modelling how the wheels go up and down with the suspension. And all sorts of other crazy stuff like that.

When I bought an Xbox a couple of years ago, the game that caught my attention most was Forza 3 (the Xbox's signature racing game). Dead Space and Halo 2 were boring next to PC shooters and Final Fantasy XIII was a tad meh. But I definitely enjoyed Forza. The controller works well with it, using two analogue triggers for brake and throttle and a joystick for steering.

But - it's missing something ...

The building obsession is with finding a cost effective steering wheel. And I think it's going to be a PC steering wheel because it'll be easier to attach it to my desk than to have it on my lap in front of the telly. Plus the PC is far more powerful than the Xbox 360.

There's a few things to think about though :

Robustness. It's pointless and frustrating to spend money on something for it to break in a few months. And most of the affordable wheels seem really bad for robustness.
Price. Think I may have to go as high as £70 to get on the bottom rung of acceptable robustness.
Fit. Not sure if this is relevant now, as wheels have been around long enough that they've evolved into the ideal.

So there you have it - Value For Money and Robustness > features.

Will I indulge this obsession ? Maybe. It'll depend on availability as well. I'd likely have to special order a wheel in order to get to a minimum acceptable level. And it'll depend on being able to get a suitable game to play it on too. I've not actually used my new joystick that much, mainly because I haven't got a good enough game to take advantage of it. (Need to check out Planetside 2 still).

Need to get healthy as well though. The health has improved, people think I look early 30s again plus most of the patches have recovered. There's still quite a few bad patches though and my ears have definitely not recovered yet. I need to figure out how I can leave them alone more to recover. And I'm back at the doctor's place on Tuesday too.